Having a great idea is easy. But turning that idea into a business is a bit more difficult. From creating a product with market viability, to hiring staff and growing to scale, the road to entrepreneurship is rife with obstacles. But, perhaps none are as fundamental as the age-old question of how to fund.

Jobs have returned to Sacramento. Many surveys, such as the Sacramento Business Review, show that the region’s employment rates have returned to pre-recession levels. Nearly 25,000 jobs came back just last year alone. Unfortunately, two-thirds of that growth is in retail and hospitality jobs that typically pay low wages, while higher-paying jobs achieved only modest gains. Can we do better?

Ann Thompson, a regional sales executive for Bank of America, knows that the surest route into the hearts and minds of millennials is through their hands — not hand-holding, but talking to them through technology. “They want to be self-served and want things convenient,” Thompson says. “So, we have to reach them through that thing they hold in their hands, a smartphone.”

The cord powering cleaner, plug-in electric cars in China now stretches across the Pacific to California.  A recent information-sharing agreement between UC Davis and the government authority that oversees China’s car industry will connect the world’s acknowledged leaders in creating clean car standards with the globe’s largest and fastest-growing new car market. 

Whether you’re looking for tenants or shopping for space: Here are some tips that might sweeten the deal or — if overlooked — can make one go sour.

The final stages of construction at a trend-setting apartment project in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, known by its address at 38 Harriett St., largely resembled a life-sized game of Tetris.

Three years ago, Gov. Jerry Brown pulled the plug on local government redevelopment agencies and the estimated $5 billion a year they spend rebuilding inner cities to combat urban blight.

Walk into any coffee shop and it’s obvious that the place we call “the office” has changed. Many of the people sitting at tables are likely mixing laptops with lattes as they browse email and write reports. Some may be pitching a sale over coffee.

This year could provide some of the first expansions in bank lending since 2008. So is the market back up to speed? No. But banks are slowly and smartly increasing their appetites for commercial lending, and the Capital Region will see its share of transactions.

Burke Fathy isn’t sure whether the building that housed Sacramento’s first Police Department will be converted to offices or apartments, but, as the managing partner of Sutter Capitol Group, he is sure the original architectural elements will stay.

Infill development is promoted as an antidote to suburban sprawl and environmental degradation and is championed by city planners, environmentalists and policy makers of all persuasions. But as local developers Paul Petrovich and Phil Angelides have long known, infill leads to fights over allegations of increased traffic or environmental hazards.

The scene was right out of a TV cop drama. Shots rang out. A crowd ducked for cover. The bad guys sped off in a getaway car. The incident in a Sacramento shopping mall last year was real life. But just like on television, the case was wrapped up in three hours, with the bad guys in jail and the car impounded.

Like an oil derrick with arms, the school-bus-yellow robot is the center of attraction in an otherwise colorless room dominated by metal castings and concrete floors. Moving like a mime on a street corner, the robot picks up a metal casting, holds it to a computer-run camera and then places the part and the fixture that holds it on a machine for tooling.

Infill or outpost? Sprawl or smart planning? How some people view the Cordova Hills development proposed for southern Sacramento County may depend on which end of Highway 50 they’re looking from.

Most businessmen have a dream of the business they want to build before they begin. Brian Watwood’s vision for his new company was born in a personal nightmare.

Last year, 2.5 million Californians were victims of security breaches that revealed their personal information to unauthorized people, according to the state Attorney General.

More dramatic than the number of people victimized is the conclusion that 1.4 million of those people would have been protected if merchants and businesses had taken the simple step to encrypt the data, inserting a digital key that locks access to information as it is transmitted.

Gary Morton has a dream and a car. If his dream comes true, like those of Henry Ford and Karl Benz before him, Morton will turn his prototype into a car company.

But Morton is not looking to build a big assembly plant or an extensive dealer network. His production will be limited to just one model that will offer baby boomers the nostalgia of the muscle cars they drove in their youth alongside their modern commitment to a pollution-free environment.